Oregon higher ed has to have a future, sometime

Considering the legislative record of Oregon universities, it’s almost a victory to say that in this session, higher education doesn’t seem to be getting battered any worse than other state efforts.

“It’s not doing as well as anybody would want it to be,” says Rep. Peter Buckley, D-Ashland, co-chair of Ways and Means, “but you could say that about any part of the state budget.”

And although Oregon universities rarely shine in NCAA swimming events, they have lots of experience treading water.

But at some point — and true, nobody expected it to be this session — we’re going to need to move toward a university system that can drive a 21st-century economy.

And the strategies we’re using to stay afloat in this recession would have to change sharply.

Thursday evening, the Ways and Means education subcommittee held a work session on the two key higher education measures — Senate Bill 242, restructuring the system to provide greater system and campus autonomy, and the could-be-worse Oregon University System budget — aiming for full committee action next Wednesday. The day before, we learned the other higher ed survival strategy, tuition increases averaging 7.5 percent but higher at the major universities — 9 percent at the University of Oregon and Portland State, 8.1 percent at Oregon State.

It’s a path to get to 2013 and it’s less than Washington’s increases, but you can’t bump up tuition 9 percent every year. There’s also a limited time frame to the system’s other tuition revenue strategy, sharply increasing the number of students paying out-of-state tuition, bringing a Californian’s UO costs to more than $40,000 a year.

Oregon has used this strategy before, in the 1990s. It works while California is in chaos, but despite our general impression, that’s not a permanent condition. When California gets its budget together again, Oregon’s out-of-state revenue stream starts to run thinner.

“I think it’s a strategy that doesn’t work long term,” says George Pernsteiner, Oregon’s higher education chancellor. He gives it three to five years — or less time than it takes most students to earn a bachelor’s degree.

“This is a way to position us for the future, but it is not a substitute for state investment. Money is needed, beginning in the 2013-15 biennium. There is no silver bullet to pay for the education of Oregonians that doesn’t involve more state spending.”

State Sen. Frank Morse, R-Albany, represents Corvallis and Oregon State. He came to Salem this session with a plan to reform the tax kicker and the capital gains tax, using part of the corporate kicker to create an occasional small revenue stream to higher education.

Not happening.

“Other than 242, I don’t see that things are changing in a strategic way,” says Morse. “I don’t think you address these things until you look at the financial structure, until you look at the tax system.”

Buckley, whose district includes Southern Oregon University, thinks there is more interest, even bipartisan interest, in higher education than when he arrived in Salem in 2005. “Hopefully,” he says, “it bodes well for when we can invest again.”

He also notices the sharply increased interest in higher education among the Legislature’s constituents, anyway, with record enrollments at state universities and community colleges.

Nobody expected an improvement in higher education in this bleak session, and the governor’s budget and SB242, which will at least let the universities keep their own tuition money, are probably the most that could be expected. But it does mean that Oregon will remain around 45th in the country in higher ed support, in an economy increasingly brutal to people without education.

Oregon’s universities can make it through another two years treading water.

But every year, just to stay afloat, they have to kick a little harder.